So it’s a strange state of affairs to find a strong source of traffic to Comic Book Herald that I’m not sure I actually want. Or, at least traffic that I can tell comes from visitors who simply will not find what they’re looking for when they click through to my site!

Here’s the situation: I recently noticed a surprising amount of organic search traffic was driving to my recap of C2e2, aka Chicago Comic Con. This seemed a little odd since the con ended over a month ago, and I expected a majority of traffic to align closely to the event dates.

I looked up the landing page in Google Search Console to see what queries were actually driving this traffic. I imagined I had stumbled across accurately predicted an untapped evergreen search like “brilliant man’s guide to comic cons” or “the best way to write about stuff.”

Turns out the searches driving to this page were… something else. Something else entirely.

Now, normally if a page on my site was achieving high visibility in Google search for an unrelated search, I’d expect the search algorithm to course correct over time. I’d expect this because normally when searchers see a result that doesn’t match their query, they don’t click it, or if they click it, they recognize it’s not at all what they were looking for and quickly bounce back to search. But primarily, I’d expect a minuscule click-through-rate, apart from those searchers who never cease to delight me and just click whatever’s first, no matter what.

What the chart shows, though, is that all of these searches for a manga webcomic I had never heard of have surprisingly high CTRs. As in, generally very good CTRs!

Why are searchers still clicking onto my comic con recap, when they are pretty clearly looking for something else?

Before I went straight to the SERPs (search engine results page) to investigate, I looked deeper into the queries and found a new (predictable) wrinkle:

These are totally searches for a porn comic.

So not only were searchers looking for some hot steamy content, but they were somehow convinced that clicking my website – specifically an article in which I talk about how sweaty I got running around C2e2 – would deliver. I won’t disagree, but clearly there’s a disconnect here!

When I finally visited the SERP (in incognito browsing mode, while crawling into our crawl space, after I’d told my wife I was going… outside… for… productive laboring) I discovered the reason my CTR was shockingly high. Namely, replicating any of these searches results in approximately no good results. And since none of the results actually seem to reflect the searcher’s intent (let’s not reflect too strenuously on that), searchers are saying “Well, this one’s first, let’s see if this has it.”

Meanwhile, Comic Book Herald has well over 1,000 organic search visits this month from people looking for, well, let’s just say it’s the most popular thing on the internet, and it’s most assuredly not my blog.

Search Oddities: Should I Do Anything About This?

On one hand, there’s a part of me that looks at a gift horse in the mouth and says “Wait, what is a gift horse, and why am I standing in front of it?” But also, “Can’t I just let this traffic keep coming in, generating some modicum of ad revenue, and maybe driving some brand awareness for crossover comic books fans?”

After all, it’s not like I feel an actual sense of discomfort being tied to this query (although I could see a professional application where this was a client website who actively wanted removal). Mostly, I just think it’s strange and a bit humorous.

Again, though, I’ve actually dealt with specific business instances where clients are receiving traffic from inapplicable searches. It’s a tricky field to navigate. I can’t go into the specifics (at least not without requesting permission and somehow explaining it’s “for my article about a very porny mixup!”), but on one brand, their largest source of non-branded traffic came for an article describing a product set they no longer manufactured.

The challenge that results is only tangentially related content that drives a boatload of traffic. What do you do in that case?

Here’s a quick list of pros and cons:

Pros:

1. Hilarious
2. Ad revenue
3. Brand awareness
4. Searchers could explore more of my content once on site (the bounce rate is 88%, so some are!)
5. The off chance that simply reading my articles is the equivalent of porn for large groups of people

Cons:

1. Obviously bad experience for those searchers
2. Extremely high bounce rate could potentially signal to Google that my site is a bad experience for these searchers (which… see con #1)
3. Inflating my site analytics metrics

So What Are Your Options For This Mixed Up Search Traffic?

Let’s be clear about the most likely client question in this scenario: No, you can’t just stop showing up for a series of organic searches. You could tag your landing page so the content doesn’t appear for anyone, but you can’t specify it to the query level.

The easiest option is of course to simply let algorithms course correct on your own. Should this content ever be made available, surely that will supersede my unrelated article. Likewise, unless this audience is endless, eventually the high bounce rate will exhaust the field of interested searchers, and the issue will become a moot point on its own.

Otherwise, I’d say the options are as follows:

• Try to re-optimize your content in such a way that you’re less likely to show up as high for the searches.
• Use your search-facing messaging (page title and meta description) to more clearly communicate these aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
• Take this opportunity to develop my own long-dormant porn career.
• Put a note at the top of the article that says, hey, I know why you’re here, and I’m not judging you, but I promise this isn’t actually what you’re looking for.
• Put a note at the top of the article that says, hey, I know why you’re here, and you’ve been judged! – just to freak them out.
• Put a note at the top of the article that says, hey, I know why you’re here, and I’m not judging you, but since I don’t have what you want, let me recommend these unrelated Comic Book Herald items you may enjoy in the future when you’re done!
• Embrace the inevitable and turn Comic Book Herald into the webcomic porn shop the people demand!

Personally, I’m leaning towards either the “link to more of my site content and try to gain some fans” or “just let it play out and watch because I’ll learn something” route.

In the meantime, just know that I see you fans of this mysterious webcomic, and I hope you find what you’re looking for one day.

The post What To Do About Search Traffic You Don’t Actually Want! appeared first on Dave Buesing.

That’s exactly what I ran in to yesterday with my comic book blog, Comic Book Herald. After my daily Google Analytics check-up, I noticed Google organic search results we’re saying some of my pages had “No Information Available,” making my site look like a common porny mcspam bot. Since I couldn’t find too many replications of this issue or detailed solutions online, below I’ve shared what I found, what I did, and how I (mostly) fixed the issue.

WHAT HAPPENED?

In short, a number of my Google search results had replaced the traditional meta description (the brief summation of the page content) with the dire Google warning “No Information is available for this page.” This warning extended across mobile and desktop search.

Learn Why: JK, Joke’s On You!

HOW DID I FIND & WHY IS THIS A PROBLEM?

The main reason I noticed this issue was a sudden 1,000+ visits decline in my overall site traffic. So to quickly answer why I’d even give much of a hoot, the lack of a proper meta description and the implication that something is wrong with my search listing was resulting in real damage to visitors clicking on my pages.

I’ll admit, I didn’t forsee the extent of this problem, and had actually noticed a similar “No information is available for this page” on one particular landing page a week earlier (shout out to Jessica Jones content!).

Since my visibility was not impacted, and the page in question wasn’t a huge traffic driver, I chalked it up to Google being weird and moved on. This proved untenable as the problem spread to a wide array of traffic drivers across my site!

It is worth noting here that unless you intentionally run searches for your own site regularly (hey, we all like to see ourselves succeed), actually spotting the info in the search engine results page (SERP) is not likely. The more likely indicators of an issue are:

1. A large visits decline identified in Google Analytics as mentioned
2. Page-level CTR declines identified in Google Search Console

APPROACH NUMBER ONE: FOLLOW GOOGLE’S WARNINGS

If you find yourself viewing similar results and click the “Learn Why” extension, Google will take you to their support page for robots.txt.

In short the page tells you that:

You are seeing this result because the page is blocked by a robots.txt file entry, which tells Google not to crawl your page

As I learned researching the issue, Google replaced their previous messaging that “Information from this page is blocked by robots.txt” (I’m paraphrasing) with the new, significantly more muddled message in late 2017.

When I saw the rationale for the error, I was simultaneously relieved and confused. The relief came because I work in SEO and deal with robots.txt files on a regular basis. The confusion came because I was quite certain my robots file did not contain information that should block any of my site content.

Obviously, this was worth checking out, and here’s the approach I took for what I would consider a typical robots.txt analysis:

1. Open your site’s file by visiting www.yourdomainname.com/robots.txt
2. Investigate all “Disallow” messages. The most common problem is “Disallow: /” which actually tells search engine crawlers to never crawl any pages on your site.
3. Use Google Search Console’s Robots.txt checker tool on problem pages to confirm any “Disallow” messaging impact.
4. Use Google Serach Console’s “Fetch as Google” tool on problem pages to confirm Google crawlers (desktop and mobile) can access site content and render on their end.
5. Ensure your site does not have multiple or cached robots.txt version – Check https vs. http, www. vs non-www, or old robots versions that Google (and other engines) may still be referencing.

APPROACH NUMBER TWO: PANIC, GET ANGRY, CONSIDER SITE CHANGES YOU’VE MADE

Following the above robots.txt analysis, I confirmed, really beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my robots.txt file was fine. There was absolutely nothing in the code that telling search engines they couldn’t crawl any of the impacted pages (or any pages on my site at all for that matter).

Translation: You’re all good here, Chief!

From here I had to back up and consider what else might be going on to cause this issue. If it’s not actually my robots file, then what is causing engines to think it’s my robots file? Here’s potentially related information I found:

1. My indexed number of AMP mobile on CBH was cut in half over the course of 10 days, down 300+ pages
2. My overall indexed pages have been steady decreasing since mid-Feb, down 300+ pages.
3. Resubmitting an XML sitemap resulted in GSC reporting “URL restricted by robots.txt” for sitemap sections
4. 10 days ago I updated my “SSL Insecure Content” plugin to force a greater number of assets to register as HTTPS
5. 5 additional plugin updates occured over this 10 day period, including my AMPforWP twice.

All this information helped me narrow down my possible error causes to either a rogue robots.txt file (questions I had at this point: Does Genesis (my WordPress theme) create it’s own robots file? Does All in One SEO plugin create a robots file? Where do I find these mystery files?), my SSL plugin update causes issues, or something going awry with my AMP content.

FIX ATTEMPT #1: SSL PLUGIN REVERSION (Day 1: 9 to 10 am)

As noted, I had made an update to my “SSL Insecure Content” plugin over this time frame in an effort to register the green check mark in Chrome for my https content. Prior to updating the plugin to the (admittedly not recommended) more extensive “content” setting, I was still getting the curious warning on all Comic Book Heralds that “Your connection to this site is not secure.”

Not Cool

Cool!

Since this was a simple fix, I started here and reverte the plugin settings to the recommended “simple” SSL.

I chased this update with the following moves:

• Fetching and rendering known “error” pages in GSC — Requested Google crawl and index linked pages (desktop and mobile).
• Resubmitted XML sitemap in GSC.
• Requested indexing of robots.txt to force Google to reevaluate the document (in theory).

RESULTS #1

• 11 a.m. Some site content serving “insecure” chrome warning as anticipated
• 1:45 p.m. Two pages (Flash and Batman!) populate correct meta descriptions in desktop search. Both pages also have returned to serving AMP content, whereas they had been regular mobile results in the a.m.!
• 1:50 p.m. Batman already back to “no information” on Desktop.
• 4:00 p.m. First error page (Jessica Jones!) still resulting in “no info” warning. Same goes for 3 of 5 test pages.

FIX ATTEMPT #2: CREATE A NEW ROBOTS FILE (Day 1: 4:15 pm)

One problem continued to trouble me throughout the day: Where was my robots file actually located? While I could access my robots at www.comicbookherald.com/robots.txt, I couldn’t actually see the document in my file manager.

After some research (namely this robots info article), I uncovered that WordPress creates a “virtual” robots.txt file that you can’t actually edit manually. The same article also confirmed that I could easily create an actual file to edit using the All In One SEO plugin (the same applies for Yoast SEO).

I activated the robots feature, and carried over the existing robots messaging verbatim, then saved the new file (which I could view in my root folder):

Robots Beware

I chased this measure by:

• Requesting Google crawl and index robots file (even though that doesn’t make sense, want to force issue)
• Requested all test pages by reindexed via GSC “Fetch and Render”

RESULTS #2

• 8 p.m. (Day 1) — Still “no info” descriptions on primary test pages, with various fluctuations.
• 10 a.m. (Day 2) — All results showing meta descriptions, AMP listings populating for test pages!

And there you have it. Success!

Such a beautiful Batman listing

IN CONCLUSION

At the end of the day, I don’t know exactly why Google search crawlers started seeing “blocks” in a robots file when there weren’t any. My best summation based on the test is that my overreaching SSL plugin was making it impossible for crawlers to access the file, so they determined an issue with the robots content. Updating the plugin and then submitting an updated robots file relatively quickly fixed the problem.

It was a frustrating experience given the loss in traffic for about a day and a half, but I’m very satisfied with the correction (for now!).

BONUS RESULTS #3: THE AFTER PARTY

Turns out I spoke too soon regarding “success.” Some additional site searches and GA digging revealed at least seven more impacted pages inside my top 50 landing pages. Fun!

I followed the same approach outlined above fetching and requesting indexation for 3 of the 7 on the evening of 3.12.

• Day 5 (8 a.m.) — All 7 newly identified pages are showing proper meta description and mobile AMP listings following request to reindex three of them in GSC.

RESOURCES:

The following articles or forums all gave me some ideas and interesting insights to consider as I investigated the issue:

On plugin conflicts: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/VF7fZqkMg5k

Google Support on “No page information in search results”: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7489871?hl=en

On WordPress virtual robots files: https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-robots-txt/

Forum about Google Search Console updating info following changes to robots: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/aKxkGmKMCMo

The post My Google Search Results Say “No Information Available”… But I’m Not Blocking Via Robots.Txt!! What’s Up?! appeared first on Dave Buesing.

Over here, though, I had a reader kindly jump in and alert me to a giant PHP warning gracing the header of davebuesing.com like the world’s techiest pimple. I had no idea, and was a bit startled to find the following warning for all to see:

Warning: Creating default object from empty value in /folder/specific/to/your/site/theme/admin-hooks.php on line 160. We’re all gonna die!

It’s the end of the world as we know it…

As a relative noob to php I found the above warning pretty distressing. I’ve dealt with warnings inside my WordPress admin before, but never so publicly. Adding a PHP warning to your blog blanner is a pretty bold declaration of cluelessness and hackability. “Hey guys, I’m great at internet stuff! Don’t mind the “doom is upon us” warning at the top of the blog!”

After a whole bunch of research, though, I was able to find a remarkably quick “solution.” I air-quote solution for reasons that will become apparent in a moment. For now, the answer:

Add “error_reporting(E_Error);” to your PHP file sending the warning

PHP!

To add this little line of code, you just need to access “Editor” in WordPress, and pull open the PHP file referenced in your warning from there. I added the code after all the file notes and before the first If statement, and I have successfully removed my error from the home page.

Note: It’s pretty foolish to add stuff willy-nilly to your live PHP files in editor. Ideally you would test this out on a localhost first. Or you can be like me and live on the edge of tomorrow #cruiselife

Now, if you happen to know a little something about something, you’ll pretty quickly realize this is basically just a band-aid that hides the warning. Again, it’s not a solution to the PHP error, so much as it is the removal of error messages on your blog homepage.

As I said, this is the quickest possible way to just get that gunk off your blog. If you find that functionality is lacking, or that things on your site are broken, clearly you’ll need to explore the PHP error in more detail. Forum explanations of all this are very tricky, and usually pretty specific to the site facing the warning. I’d start with the likely source of your problem, your server’s recent upgrade of PHP that you ignored because surely nothing would go wrong.

In the meantime, enjoy the error free homepage!

The post Quickest Possible Way to Deal With PHP Error on Your WordPress Blog appeared first on Dave Buesing.

I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the sentiment presented by Northwestern Professor Rachel Davis Mersey during this week’s discussion of audience segmentation on Northwestern’s ongoing Content Strategy MOOC.

Amazingly, with Google Analytics’ recent demographic improvements, this more challenging, more detailed information is easier than ever to view. The challenge is more in implementation. Here’s how to set it up.

Google Analytics Demographics

Prior to the inclusion of Demographics, Google Analytics was great for traffic source data, visitor behavior, and general site performance. But personal details about visitors skewed towards technical details like browser type, mobile device, or network domain.

The most personal bit of data came in the form of geography, with Google Analytics telling you exactly where on earth your site visitors were coming from. I suppose with this, if you really wanted, you could reverse-stalk your way to a general understanding of your visitors’ location.

According to Google, the Demographics & Interests Report unveils the following:

• Demographics
  • Overview (overview of traffic by age and gender)
  • Age (traffic by age ranges)
  • Gender (traffic by gender)
• Interests
  • Overview (overview of traffic by affinity and other categories)
  • Affinity Categories (behavior by affinity categories)
  • In-Market Categories (behavior by in-market categories)
  • Other Categories (behavior by other interest categories)

This is the biggest development in understanding your online customer or blog visitor since Saving Private Ryan.

How To Implement Demographics and Interests Reports

Ok, ok, before I geek out some more over the incredible depth of persona-building this information allows, let’s discuss how to implement.

Unlike most Google Analytics’ segments, you actually have to alter your code slightly to see demographics data. Google has some decent material on making these modifications, but in several cases it can get confusing.

In particular, if you’re using Yoast’s Google Analytics for WordPress, it can be unclear how you add these suggested display network modifications.

Fortunately, this Video from Justin McClelland makes it very easy.

100% of the credit to Justin on the quick solution there. After several hours trying various complicated coding workarounds and one system of pulleys and levers, I implemented Justin’s technique and had results in under 12 hours.

And again, if you’re just straight hard-coding these changes yourself, you’ll want to use this easy to follow Google guide.

Using Demographics Data in Google Analytics

For the average human, seeing Google get their Big Brother on like this is somewhere between creepy and dastardly. But for the marketer, it’s an amazing opportunity to understand your online customer in a way you couldn’t before.

As you’d expect, Gender and Age estimates from Google are straight forward. In two days of data, my comic book blog has seen the vast majority of traffic from males between the age of 25-34. Or, in other words, exactly who you’d expect.

Girls are totally the orange one.

It’s not until you start looking at the affinity and interests segments that this information gets crazy useful.

For example, from the aforementioned comic book blog, check out Google’s two-day breakdown of visitor characteristics:

Who just yelled nerd? Don’t think you can hide from me!

A couple thoughts here:

1) It’s cool to see how spot on this information is. Of course my loyal legions are die hard comic book fans and would enjoy superhero films and video games.

2) There are a couple interests that I immediately recognize as missed opportunities on my site right now. The first is online video, of which I have very little. If I know that my target visitor is frequently interested in this type of material, maybe that’s something to consider a lot more seriously in my future content. And second, I never talk about roleplaying games. I’m not even sure if that’s not a sex thing. Could be a good type of content to have another writer provide on the site.

In short, this is one of the cooler things to happen to Google Analytics in my time as a professional dweeb. It can help with everything from ad targeting to persona creation. Google even has some useful ideas for how to use this data themselves.

So go ahead and implement and let’s hear what you think – how do you plan to use this data?

The post How To Implement Google Analytics Demographics Reports appeared first on Dave Buesing.

Such is the case with SEO’s recent entrance in the Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. punctuation debate. A blend of my day job and comic book TV from Joss Whedon? It’s the role I was born to play. Let’s do this.

An Intro To The S.H.I.E.L.D. Debate

The debate – stemming mostly from television and entertainment writers – is as follows: Calling a major network television show Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is an affront to carpal tunnels everywhere. At first glance, those periods might not be all that intimidating, but try writing a paragraph or two that references the show frequently. I’ll admit, I’m already tired and we’ve barely begun. 

Richard Lawson of The Atlantic Wire wrote a great article this week renouncing the periods in SHIELD (gasp!). From Lawson:

Marvel has taken over entertainment and there’s little we can do about it. But, in the interest of common courtesy, nay decency, can’t they cut us a small break on this heavy, clunky title? We’re still including the all-important “Marvel’s” part, aren’t we? Is that not enough? Must our weary fingers be forced to type those extra periods every single time? No.

The Atlantic Wire’s 100% Awesome Graphic

I tend to agree, mostly because all the copy editors I know live in different states. Later in the article, though, an interesting point is raised about the SEO implications from EW’s always fantastic Darren Franich:

Currently, we use periods, although there’s an only-for-online twist: In headlines, we go no-period for SEO purposes.

The SEO twist rears its sinister face! Let’s take a closer look.

How Does Punctuation Impact SEO?

There’s an implication in the EW policy that including periods in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (oh lord my hands!) will damage the website’s search engine rankings.

In theory, this concern makes some sense. As Lawson illuminates in his article:

Franich speculates that ‘If the show is good/successful and people are talking about it in five months, everyone is just going to call it ‘SHIELD’ and write it ‘SHIELD’ because I can’t imagine the average civilian writing ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ That’s six [extra] characters in Twitter.’

Naturally, this makes sense, and we can assume that Google searches for ‘Agents of SHIELD’ (sans metacarpal breaking punctuation) will far surpass searches for ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ (presumably conducted only by the editors of the Chicago Manual of Style and James Lipton).

BUT – when we take a look at Google’s estimated search volume (from their Keyword Planner in Adwords), we find a different story:

No difference! At least in terms of search volume, Google appears to be interpreting punctuated and non-punctuated SHIELD as exactly the same search.

This tends to be true of other popular punctuated acronyms as well. From RSVP to BYOB (or is that R.S.V.P. to B.Y.O.B. ???) Google is intuitive enough to understand that the searcher intent is exactly the same.

Thinking about it from Google’s perspective for a moment, it’s clear it’s in their best interest to serve up the best Agents of SHIELD content to searchers regardless of punctuation used in the article, page title, or meta data. It’s more important for Google to meet their user’s needs than it is for them to remain susceptible to “clever” SEO manipulation.

Don’t believe me? That’s cool, we just met, I get it (call me maybe?). But check this out – The SERPs (search results page) for both the punctuated and non-punctuated Agents of SHIELD searches are exactly the same. Link for link.

One potentially telling discovery from these results would be that Google doesn’t bold the punctuated version of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the Wikipedia entry.

In general, Google will bold any exact match words in the page title or URL of a search result. The fact that they choose not to bold Wikipedia’s punctuated use of S.H.I.E.L.D. even when the search term uses the same punctuation is a big tell how they interpret this search. The other major tell? That Wikipedia entry is the only first page listing to include the periods in their URL.

That said, 9 out of 10 page titles include punctuated S.H.I.E.L.D. 5 out of 10 page 2 search results do not include punctuation (I’ll let you figure out how many page 2 results do).

But Wait, I Thought Nobody Would Search for S.H.I.E.L.D.?

While sound at first glance, the theory that no one will search for punctuated S.H.I.E.L.D. is overlooking the power of Google.

Google Instant, Google’s suggested search will basically eradicate the concern of no one actually typing out all that punctuation.

You only need to enter one period before Google assumes you’re going to punctuate the entire search. This expedites the search enough that it would be unreasonable to rule out this behavior. And as we’ve already shown, the difference between the two searches is borderline non-existent in Google’s eyes. Attempting to optimize for one over the other is like trying to optimize for tomato over tum-ah-toe.

For Geek’s Sake, How Would Stan Lee Do It?

Most importantly, what is the actual, comic book correct way to list out S.H.I.E.L.D? 

While the SEO answer seems to clearly indicate Google interprets the term as equal (and to play it smart: use the punctuated version in your page title and the non-punctuated version in your URL, and whatever the heck you want in your content), the comic book answer is a lot more complex.

Marvel’s official stance on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. pretty clearly includes punctuation. Same goes for the most recent standalone comic series on the market, Jonathan Hickman’s S.H.I.E.L.D. 

As much as I love Hickman’s current output (from Avengers to Manhattan Projects to East of West), S.H.I.E.L.D is a pretty mixed bag. It aspires for cosmic, atemporal greatness, but ultimately it’s a passable anomoly hidden within the Marvel Universe. Are we really going to let that dictate how we use SHIELD in modern times? I say nay.

As Franich points out in the Lawson article, we can actually find precedent for non-punctuated SHIELD in the comics as far back as 1968. That said, the article references Jim Steranko’s iconic Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #15 as the first instance of a non-punctuated SHIELD and this simply isn’t the case.

A quick view of this series’ coverbrowser collection shows us that SHIELD was referenced on comic book covers without punctuation as early as its eighth issue. 

Look Ma, no Periods!

The point being: If Jim Steranko and editor Stan Lee and Marvel Comics were ok not using periods in punctuation by the eighth issue of this series? Well, you’re darn well safe not using periods in between SHIELD either.

Did Any of This Matter? Even a Little?

In the grand scheme of things, this may be entirely inconsequential. But it highlights the fact that ultimately mundane SEO considerations can often overwhelm the stuff that actually matters. It also highlights the wild west nature of SEO. Ask several different SEO consultants and you’ll probably get several different answers. Inevitably, you have to research and try various approaches and proceed with what works from there.

In a lot of ways, this explains why SEO has such a negative perception, too. Wait, we need to go World War Hulk vs. Dr. Strange on our hands because it will help our search rankings? That’s stupid!

It’s the implication that SEO is a bunch of little tricks that go completely against functional brains that keeps bringing the industry down to the level of manipulator supreme.

Having said all that, I’m glad I could find a mainstream SEO issue that doesn’t involve the words ‘dead’ or ‘fraud.’

Who will rank for Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.? The punctuated or the non-punctuated?

My guess? It will be whoever writes the most interesting content on the best site, and whoever is taking full advantage of Google News search results. Period.

The post You Can’t Spell Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Without SE… Oh appeared first on Dave Buesing.

Here it is:

Please include attribution to www.miamiandbeaches.com with this graphic.

Woot woot!

Practice Map –>

View Miami Dining Scene in a larger map

The post Infographic – Romantic Guide to Miami appeared first on Dave Buesing.

As you may find with your websites, though, this promise of ultimate branded search control is often ineffective or ignored. Why is this exactly? Was it something you said, or is this just a case of Google asserting their subtle dominance as Lord and Master of your universe?

Uhhh… What’s a Sitelink?

For the unfamiliar, sitelinks refer to the bonus links on a search page to additional pages on a site. Typically, you will see sitelinks with branded searches where Google is so sure they have the right listing #1 organically that they toss in a bunch of extra pages searchers might also want. For example:

Branded sitelinks in action

In general, sitelinks are a positive for both established brands and searchers. It’s easier for consumers to find what they might be looking for, and it’s easier for a brand to serve up these pages without a need for navigation.

Sitelinks only really present a problem when you decide Google is not serving up the pages for your website that you most want visitors to find. This is where the Sitelinks Demotion tool enters the picture.

Demoting Sitelinks Through Google Webmaster Tools

With your Google Webmaster Tools account, you can very easily find your way to the Sitelinks Demotion tool. You just click configuration–>Sitelinks.

Click for the close up

From here Google goes on to explain all your new-found power.

Sitelinks are automatically generated links that may appear under your site’s search results. Learn more. If you don’t want a page to appear as a sitelink, you can demote it. Only site owners and users with full permissions can demote sitelinks.

Already from the language it’s clear that the Sitelinks Demotion tool is somewhat limited in scope. You can not actually tell Google what page you want added as a sitelink. Instead, you can simply demote a page that you do not want so prominent.

Presumably, from here Google will take your demotion into account and promptly remove the offending sitelink from your search results.

This is not necessarily the case.

The Demoted Sitelink… It Is Still In Search Results. What Gives?

The first reaction you might have to your sitelink hanging around like an unwanted leech is that you did something wrong in Webtools. This is definitely possible, as Google has made sure to make the Sitelinks Demotion tool about as confusing as possible. For something so simple, they really made sure to make it an outtake from the SAT reading section (I never took the SAT; no idea if that’s a section).

Assuming you are demoting a sitelink for a search result that leads to your homepage, you can leave the first text entry field blank. This post sums up the distinction between text fields nicely.

If after, checking again, you’re very confident that you’re looking at a sitelink for your homepage, and that you demoted the correct URL (I’m confident along with you; you got this), there’s really only one remaining solution.

Google thinks you’re wrong.

Wrong! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

That’s right. For algorithmic reasons that our puny human minds may not comprehend, Google has decided the sitelink in questions is, in fact, what your visitors are looking for.

There’s a really good Google+ discussion on this exact circumstance that eventually pulls de facto Google WebTools spokesman, John Mueller, into the fray.

The most informational quote from Mueller comes here, following a question about an Accounting firm with a sitelink promoting a one-time “free twinkies” giveaway they held:

It’s not guaranteed that you’d be able to remove it as a Sitelink, but it does demote it (so if we have better ones to show, it’s possible that we won’t show the Twinkies one). The thing to keep in mind is that Sitelinks are query-dependent, so just because something is a Sitelink once, doesn’t mean it’ll be a Sitelink for all queries.

The part that stands out to me is the assertion that a demotion will only take hold if the algorithm finds better pages to show.

The short conclusion being? If you have a small site, just be happy you have sitelinks in the first place!

Alternate Sitelinks Demotion Techniques

The Webmaster Tools Sitelinks option has a lot of appeal, largely because of it’s speed and (relative) ease of use.

That said, if you’ve demoted a Sitelink and just can’t get it to go away, it’s time to evaluate why you want that sitelink out of the picture in the first place.

Is it an existing page on your site that you want visitors to find, you just don’t want it prominently displayed?

This is going to be the trickiest kind of page to manage, and it’s also the situation I’m looking at currently. The most reasonable answer, if the page is not one you want accessible in search results, is to apply a noindex tag. Remember, though: this strategy only works if you’re comfortable with that page completely removed from Google’s index.

If that’s not a solution you want here, you’re going to have to wait on the Sitelinks Demotion tool to take effect. Again: this may not actually happen, and you may be stuck with a less than optimal sitelink.

If your page in question is actually a removable link, then Mueller’s advice from above is to 404 or 301 redirect the page to the preferred result. In theory, this change should then apply to your live sitelinks.

Sitelinks Demotions can be a frustrating experience when they won’t take hold. While there are a few alternate options, end of the day you may be at the whim of this finick-y Google Webmaster Tool, and Google’s valuation of your landing pages. No one likes to be ignored, but getting a word with Google just isn’t what it used to be.

Related articles

• Google is a Brand’s Best Friend: How Sitelinks dominate first search results page.
• Google Sub-Sitelinks Are Here
• Google Mega Sitelinks: What You Should Know.

The post Why is Google Webmaster Tools Not Listening to My Sitelinks Command? appeared first on Dave Buesing.

While those aren’t bad ideas, there are other ways to accomplish the exact same search goal – and it won’t cost you a dime.

I’m talking about a search marketing tactic I have deemed (in my own mind) “Organic Referrals.”

In essence, organic referrals are marketing tactics that drive traffic  through a search page, without involving pay-per-click ads OR ranking your website through quality SEO.

Huh?

In short, you’re letting another website do the heavy SEO lifting, and then jumping on their shoulders, with a tasty flavor of Gatorade or perhaps a beloved tune on your lips so they’re not angry with you.

How exactly do you do this and what on earth am I really talking about?

Organic Referral Traffic

In the world of Google Analytics metrics, organic and referral cover two entirely separate sources of traffic.

On one side of the ring you have organic: any instance where a visitor clicked your website’s natural search result (unless of course they were on an iPhone using iOS 6).

On the other side of the ring you have referrals: any instance of another website or social network sending visitors to your site. This can include everything from a Facebook share to another blogger linking to your post.

Organic Referrals attempt to combine the best of both worlds. You identify another strong website (traditionally a referral source of traffic) that is ranking well for one of your targeted search terms in organic search.

Nine times out of ten, this means you produce an awesome piece of content (repeat: It has to be AWESOME) and share it on a related forum or Q & A site.

So You’re Just Spamming Forums? Some Innovator

I know, I know: Shoving links to your website into forums or Q & A sites is no better than spamming blog comments. It’s ineffective and outdated and terrible SEO advice!!!

That’s the general thinking and consensus we see around this strategy now, and with good reason. In a desperate attempt to build links, many cheap-trick SEOs greatly abused this tactic, to limited or minimal gain.

Southern Girls is hugely underrated.

But here’s where that thinking starts to fail: When you’ve actually produced a great answer to an expressed need on one of these forums. An example:

Example of Organic Referrals in Action

Over on the comic book blog, I recently stumbled into this exact situation.

I’d put in a lot of hours on a piece of content, and was researching how that content was ranking for some related keywords. During the research, I noticed that a Sci Fi forum on StackExchange.com ranked consistently well for variations of my target keyword phrase.

When I clicked through to the question, I quickly gathered that no one had answered it yet. And that I was confident my piece of content would truly provide value to the questioner.

So I answered the question. Here’s what happened:

The Traffic Impact of Organic Referrals

The graph below won’t wow you with traffic prowess (just ask my wife), but what it does clearly show is that my site has seen consistent traffic from this source since I answered one question a week ago.

Organic Referrals, y’all

There are a few numbers that jump out to me, but the biggest two are:

1. This answered question accounts for 3.5% of total site traffic.
2. The average visit duration is a mind-numbing 41 minutes.

Not a bad boost in traffic for a few minutes of helping someone out in a forum.

Again, you won’t see a huge spike in traffic the way you might for a featured post on Reddit or a huge retweet from a key influencer.

With organic referrals, though, that’s not really what you’re looking for. Ideally, this traffic should provide as consistent a flow as the ranking of the original source dictates. Of course, visitors have to jump an additional hoop compared to pure organic visits (reading both the question and the answer and THEN clicking the link in this case), but this sort of traffic will have a lot more in common with organic trends.

The upside there is that you don’t need to bank on the traffic drying up when the initial surge is over either.

This is NOT Link-Building

This needs to be said again. One enormous misconception that can convert organic referral marketing into spam is treating this as link-building.

Don’t treat this like link-building.

For starters, most forums or Q &A sites worth a lick of salt (at what point was value measured in licks of salt? Is there any way we can go back to that financial standard?) are using nofollow tags on all the links you include.

And secondly, if you’re “building links” through forums or communities, the real people involved are going to find you out and probably kick you out. And then they’ll come for your family and make them watch Fantastic Four II or something truly heinous.

NOT AGAIN. NOT AGAIN!!!

How to Include A Link to Your Content in a Forum

I won’t go into the literal ‘how’ (you can probably figure out how to copy and paste a link), but given the perceived spammish-ness of this tactic, it’s worth addressing how you to cleanly enter a discussion.

The first, and most ideal way to go about this is to engage with the community before you share your content.

Full disclosure: I didn’t do this with the StackExchange example above, and there are occasions where you can get away with skipping this step.

BUT – with large, blooming communities like Reddit, you’re going to have a hard time having success without making some effort to engage with the community. You have to at least understand how the community works, too (for example, what’s a subreddit, and what will determine whether anyone even sees your link?). End of the day, the content you’re sharing will make or break your success, but connecting with an audience that knows, or at least recognizes you, can be hugely rewarding.

Traffic like WILD

With that in mind, there are a couple options when it comes to cleanly linking within a group discussion:

• Short & Sweet – You just quickly link to your content with a quick “Try this!”

The problem with short & sweet is that it’s likely to be viewed as SPAMMITY SPAM SPAM. That’s just the expectation of online browsing now. When I see a link in the comments of a website, 98% of the time I assume it’s spam. And the other 2%, I’m literally drunk and only find out it’s spam after clicking like an idiot.

•  Answer the Question First – Yes, without sending traffic to your site.

I prefer this option, and it’s the one I utilized in the example above. Technically speaking, I provided enough information that the questioner does not need to click my link to get an answer.

This was intentional – When you enter the fray to answer a question like this, your actual aim should be to help people out. Again – you’re identifying a need and providing a resource.

When you just provide a link, even if it’s great content, I think a lot of times people will assume you are promoting and helping yourself. Which you are. You shameless, arrogant capitalist.

This is more passable when you promote yourself as a tangential part of of helping someone else. Now everybody wins and we can join hands together in the great universal church of online peace.

A little too Human Centipede-ish, isn’t it?

Wrap it Up!

In reality, organic referrals are nothing new. In most ways it’s just good ol’ fashioned marketing that happens to take place in the search results.

Although PPC and SEO get all the search love, it’s important for bloggers or small website owners to recognize that the answer to eyeballs and pageviews isn’t always outranking the competition.

You know what they say: When you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. And when you can’t join ’em, find a forum that hasn’t closed responses yet.

Related articles

• The Death of Link Building and the Rebirth of Link Earning – Whiteboard Friday
• Link Building In A Post-Penguin SEO World
• Why PPC Should Be a Part of Your Online Marketing Strategy

The post Ranking in Google Without SEO Or PPC: Identifying Organic Referrals appeared first on Dave Buesing.

There’s a very good chance that right now the direct traffic portion of your Google Analytics is muddling the accuracy of all your data. Here’s why and what you can do about it.

This is not a new problem, but it’s one that still doesn’t get the attention it deserves given the implications.

The problem is this: Apple’s release of the iOS 6 operating system (late September 2012) gets filtered into Direct Traffic regardless of the visitor’s actual source.

So all those iPhone searches you may be getting? They’re not counting towards your organic traffic the way they should be!

Take a look at your direct traffic metrics dating back to the start of September. Notice an inexplicable rise starting towards the end of the month? There’s a good chance you will.

This can range anywhere from “kind of annoying and confusing” to “I HATE YOU ANALYTICS YOU HAVE SURELY SENT ME TO MY DOOOOOMMMMMM!!”

Doom Reigns Eternal (Photo credit: yum9me)

If you’re a webmaster who’s just interested in seeing what’s going on with your traffic, this likely remains in the “quirky things to know” category. It’s good info to have, you can follow the steps below and straighten everything out, and keep on blogging like nothing every happened.

But if you’re an SEO Manager for various clients? This stinks. There’s no way around it, it stinks like cat litter in a high school boy’s locker room (what are they even doing with the litter in there?).

The reality: you’ve been missing mobile visits. The good news? You can start to estimate just how much mobile traffic you should be counting towards organic and boost your reporting figures moving forward.

The Direct Traffic Solution

To be honest, direct traffic is confusing enough as is. Any normal person would assume ‘Direct’ included only instances of visitors typing your URL directly into their address bar.

In reality, Google expands their definition of direct to include quite a bit more.

This is why you see a wide variety of landing page URLs in your direct traffic when you view that section in GA. This really threw me at first. 

You mean twelve people typed in “www.davebuesing.com/google-thinks-im-a-thug” on the same day? How did they even know to do that?

The answer of course, is they didn’t. Your direct visitors may have bookmarked a page, or added you to a reader, or had the URL auto-appear in their browser because of previous browsing history.

Do you, GA, do you.

Given all that, adding iOS 6 mobile traffic to the cluttered mix doesn’t exactly help clarify source attribution.

Here’s what you can do: Read this post by AJ Kohn and execute.

Seriously. Back in December, Kohn laid out a fantastic strategy for analyzing and filtering your iOS 6 traffic.

The post will make it very clear how you can quickly view your iOS 6 traffic using advanced segments.

iOS 6 Traffic Creeping Up on Direct

Analyzing Direct Traffic for Legitimacy

I wrote recently about ways your Google Analytics data might get ‘hacked.‘ One of the first steps in that process was analyzing direct traffic for unexpected spikes that could be considered glaring anomalies.

Taking a look at the graph above, you can see that my most recent day of traffic saw a big surge in direct visits. Is this a bot infiltrating the system?

When you factor in the iOS 6 advanced segment, it becomes clear that this is probably not a bot and instead totally legitimate traffic. What am I basing this on?

You’ll find once you implement your iOS 6 advanced segment that it follows the trend line of your direct traffic. Meaning – as your direct traffic appears to increase, your iOS 6 traffic increases at the same rate.

The assumption here is that the direct traffic line is being proportionally boosted by a good day of mobile search traffic.

If you find a situation where the direct traffic line and iOS 6 line do NOT correspond, you”ll want to analyze further where all that direct traffic might be coming from. In that case, an annoying bot hack is more likely.

Direct Traffic is Stealing From Organic

There’s no two ways around it – because of the new iOS 6 implementation, work you’re doing to rank well for mobile searches might not be getting credit. Which means you might not be getting credit. Which is of course a travashamockery.

As you report on organic results, the increasing prevalence of mobile search is going to make the accuracy of your data even fuzzier. Better to get on top of this confusion now, than have to explain to a client after the fact that their traffic really was doing great all along!

What do you think? Seeing sites with enormous percentages of “lost” organic traffic? Found better ways to deal with mis-attribution? I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

Related articles

• What To Do About a Fake BS Surge of Google Analytics Visits
• Apple’s iOS 6 Now Running On Over 80 Percent Of iDevices, Says Chitika
• Why Google Analytics Tagging Matters – Whiteboard Friday

The post Why Is My Direct Traffic So High? appeared first on Dave Buesing.

You’re sitting there in front of your computer, all set to analyze another day’s worth of Google Analytics traffic, and BOOM!, tough actin’ Tinactin! Or wait… Boom! there’s a huge surge of traffic! How exciting!

At least, it’s very exciting until you engage in your usual breakdown of traffic and realize this sudden windfall of good fortune – unlike any sort of traffic numbers you’re used to seeing – is not at all what it seems.

The visits are all direct and (not set). The average time on site, percent of new visitors, and bounce rate figures are appalling. In truth, this apparent great day for your website might be the single most confusing thing to ever happen to your analytics data.

How do you break down what happened and prevent it from continuing?

Table of Contents

Identifying the Infiltrating Spam Bots

Analyzing Direct Traffic for Spam

Where are your Bots coming from?

How do I kill this?

Identifying the Infiltrator

In general, there’s an assumption that all Google Analytics data is from legitimate human visitors around the globe. On occasion, though, spam bots can sneak through Google’s barriers.

It’s important when you see an anomalous surge like the above to ask yourself: Have I done anything on the site recently that justifies this surge?

It’s very possible that you have. Maybe it was an infographic you spent months on, or something as simple as an article retweeted by a celebrity or major corporation.

To validate the origin of these visits, my first recommendation is to view the ‘All Traffic’ section of your analytics (Traffic Sources –> Sources –> All Traffic).

From here, take a look at your top traffic sources and click on each to see where your surge is coming from. Again, what you want to do is identify the anomaly compared to your site’s previous data.

If it turns out that the spike in traffic is through a referral source like Twitter, or a major spike in organic traffic through a newly established keyword set, great – You’re done and congrats!

If it’s an impossibly high spike in direct traffic, though? Looks like your Google Analytics got spammed. This is going to require some more digging.

Directly disappointing

Direct Traffic Spam Analysis

At first, this sort of direct traffic surge will make no sense. You’re not alone in the confusion.

You mean to tell me that hundreds of new visitors suddenly decided to type my URL directly into their browser? Or visit my site from a saved bookmark or RSS feed? What the H?

It’s a weird one, and 99% of the time it’s because this direct traffic is total BS.

The first thing I would do is narrow the data down to the day the spike occurred  If the surge has been going on for some time, start with the first day you noticed it.

From there, go ahead and select ‘Landing Pages’ as your secondary dimension. This will let you see if this is a sitewide bot attack, or just a select few pages.

I’ve highlighted the most telling stats above. As you can see, these direct ‘visitors’ are hitting one page, immediately bouncing, and almost always registering as new visitors. Tell-tale bot behavior if I’ve ever seen it.

At this point, you should be about 90% sure your analytics got bot’d. There are a few more things we can deduce about this spam within GA.

Where Do The Bots Live?

One of the easiest ways to re-confirm the spam bot suspicion is by analyzing the location of this surge in traffic.

The simplest way to do this is to change the secondary dimension on your one-day direct traffic spike data to ‘City.’ If the vast majority of your shady looking direct visits are coming from the same city, guess what? Bot attack!

Personally, I prefer to analyze this data a little more visually. You can do this in analytics by clicking ‘Audience –> Demographics –> Location.’

Start clicking through the locations that contain the most visits. In my case, clicking ‘United States’ and then ‘California’ (which had about 90% of the day’s traffic) led me to the following insight.

What a Valentine’s Day treat – 77% of all my traffic arriving from Palo Alto, California! And look at the rest of those metrics. I won’t pretend my site is the world’s most revered, but a 99.42% bounce rate is a little strong.

And why the sudden interest from little old Palo Alto? Either my guerrilla marketing campaign in a city I’ve never thought about paid off, or… BOTS!

One quick important consideration here that will help you determine how to move forward: Does your site regularly get visits from the city in question? Expand your date range and see what kind of traffic you regularly get from this area. If you’re running a local website and the answer is “none, ever, and I don’t want anymore” it will make your solution significantly easier.

Bonus Bot Analysis

At this point, we should really be talking about solutions for dealing with this fake BS surge in traffic. But I have one more bit of Google Analytics diving that can offer some information.

Right now, we know that the website is recording bogus visits and we know where they’re coming from. What we don’t know yet is the who.

The first test here is to check out what domain all these visits are coming from. There are a handful of ways to do this, but the simplest is from the location analysis we just did. Add ‘Domain’ as your secondary dimension to all those visits from the single location in question.

If you get something other than ‘unknown.com,’ Google that thing and figure out what the source is! For example, a while back I noticed a client getting their surge from aws.com. A little bit of digging, and I found that aws could stand for Amazon Web Services (or Analytics Web Spammer).

In most instances I’ve seen of nonsense visits, the culprit is some sort of hosting/web services software.

If you do get the dreaded ‘unknown.com,’ there’s one more section to check: Audience –> Technology –> Networks.

From the graph above you’ll likely be able to verify the network generating this surge. In my example, the connection is abundantly clear – My friends in Palo Alto happen to be Palo Alto Networks.

Kill the Bogus Bot Visits!

Ok, so now the important part: How do we kill it?

Google Analytics Option #1: Advanced Segments

The easiest way, purely from a data analysis perspective, is by creating an advanced segment in Google Analytics that excludes the spamming service provider we just identified. For example:

This is easy enough, and will allow you to compare data without fear of compromised numbers. Apply the advanced segment and you can compare this month to the same month the previous year without those completely phony visits.

Problems here:

1. You might be getting totally legitimate visits from that service provider! Very important to take a look at the traffic from this provider over time to see if this is a one-time spam hit, or an occasionally valid source.
2. It’s just a band-aid for data analysis and doesn’t prevent the same problem from occurring again tomorrow.

Google Analytics Option #2: Exclude Filters

The way to actually make sure these visits don’t keep spamming your data is through an exclude filter at the analytics profile level. There are a number of different filters that could work, with varying degrees of problems.

I’ll make a note here that when you’re working with profile filters, you want to be very careful to keep a clean source of website data. You should have one unfiltered, untouched GA profile at all times. Create a new profile, or use an existing ‘test profile’ for the changes that follow. This way, if something goes wrong, you still have all your data perfectly safe elsewhere.

1. • Predefined Filter: Remember when we looked for the Domain creating this traffic? If you found a unique domain, you can use that now in a filter.

Warning! – Much like the advanced segment above, it’s important to consider here what traffic from this domain has looked like over time. If it’s a generic hosting domain name and you get a few legitimate visits from it, this is probably not the best answer.

• •  Predefined Filter: You can also exclude ‘Traffic from the IP addresses” pretty easily. Hopefully you’ve already done this for your home and work IP addresses (if not, there’s not time like the present!), and you’ll execute this the same way.

Warning! – There’s a more complicated way to verify that these IP addresses from DNS Stuff are without a shadow of a doubt the IP’s you want to exclude. It involves server logs and a serious deep dive into your site. I’ll get into that later, for the sake of everyone’s sanity.

• • Custom Filter: If you aren’t able to use either of the above two options, there are still some custom filters you can apply. Unfortunately you won’t be able to exclude easily by service provider name. You can, on the other hand, easily exclude an entire city.

Warning! – The caveat here is pretty obvious and has already popped up; excluding an entire city isn’t exactly the cleanest way to deal with this problem. If you’re a global or national business site, or just a regular blog, there’s no reason you wouldn’t want to see perfectly legitimate visits from any city (unless you just hate Green Bay or something because SCREW YOU PACKERS!).

Those Bots Are Still Visiting Your Site, Even Now

After all that, there’s the disconcerting knowledge that those bots are still gaining access to your site! Just because you filtered them out of your analytics data doesn’t mean they aren’t still crawling all over your site, like a bunch of parasitic robot tapeworms.

Or at least, those filters don’t mean those bots couldn’t return to crawl your site at any time. In most examples of this I’ve seen, the spike of fake traffic occurs over the course of one (maybe two) day(s).

If your spike is continuous with no signs of slowing, or you want to be thorough and really make sure your website isn’t wasting valuable server time on these nonsense crawlers, you can block the spamming user-agent in your robots.txt file.

More Robots? What Am I, Will Smith?

I know, I know, this whole thing quickly spirals into the annoyingly tech-y realm of nerd that most website owners probably want to avoid. I mean, if you just want to write on your blog and maybe collect some adsense revenue, this whole process is a huge pain.

Speaking of adsense… if you’re looking for a compelling reason to go to all this trouble of discovering and blocking a spamming user-agent, adsense might be a good one. You know what those bots might be doing in addition to screwing with your Google Analytics visits?

Boosting the ever-living daylights out of your ad impressions.

Without going into too much detail about Adsense, if Google thinks you are trying to manipulate your Ad revenue through a surge of automated bots? I can’t imagine they’ll respond kindly.

That said, since all of the server log and robots.txt analysis goes well beyond the scope of cleaning up your Google Analytics data, I’ll have to provide a more detailed companion piece another time.

For now, I hope this helps answer a lot of your questions about cleaning up your Google Analytics after a spam bot spike.

If you have any questions, or suggestions, or even just plain old disgust with something stupid I’ve said, let me hear about it in the comments! (Or feel free to mail the disgust to my wife and let her revel in the power of the multitude.)

The post What To Do About a Fake BS Surge of Google Analytics Visits appeared first on Dave Buesing.